Weather Magic

Yamai’s magic is considerably rare among mages. Weather magic is one of the four manipulation magic types that stem directly from raw magical energy. This means it is one of the purest forms of magic, but also one of the most unstable types. Yamai has trained alongside the other children of her town under the guidance of their old mentors who have passed down the techniques for generations. Her control over her magic is fairly strong, but the energy itself still strongly affects Yamai’s mood and electric sparks or gusts of wind can even manifest in fits of strong emotion. She is able to summon storm clouds for rain, lightning, and thunder, can bring forth strong winds, form medium-sized tornadoes, and can cause light snow to come down.

Gardening

Yamai has been taking care of her family’s garden alongside her mother ever since she was five years old. She has learned many gardening techniques from her and takes care of a small group of her own succulents and cacti in one part of the garden, even if they don’t require as much attention. She enjoys being outside amongst the flowers while she weeds and plants to help out in the garden, but she has been responsible for a few accidental plant deaths in her time. She’s not a perfect gardener, but she does hold a lot of information about plants and how to grow them.

Weather Dancing

Yamai practiced dancing with other children in her hometown when she was very young and had been learning their traditional movements for years. The dance movements are most often used to help spiritually connect the mage with the planet to help them conjure up different weather patterns. In a sense, they practice a form of weather-dancing that is unique to the few, sparse weather mage settlements where each town has its own style that differs from another town’s style. Yamai’s dancing skills are adequate for someone her age and can help her focus her energy, but she is certainly far from professional.

Cooking

Having lived as an only child who looked after many of the younger children in her town, Yamai had to learn how to cook and prepare meals for the kids she supervised for long hours of the day in between her dancing lessons, gardening, and store management. Her parents taught her many traditional recipes that her grandparents taught them, from simple tips for small snacks to full recipes for larger meals. She is not as well-trained in other styles of food and only really knows how to make the select recipes she was taught, not making her entirely reliable as a traveling cook but still better than nothing.

Yamai grew up in the town of Damerel with her parents as an only child in their simple home. Damerel was rather reclusive and distant from other towns and magic towns as part of an old, ancient tradition of isolationism, so Yamai wasn’t allowed to visit other communities for a large portion of her life. She only knew what was within the town’s boundaries until she was finally old enough to help run her parent’s shop and start her intermediate weather manipulation training at the age of ten. By this time, the older children like Yamai were considered independent enough to venture out of the town and visit neighboring towns in the valley, but they could never go past the valley’s limits or they would be brought back by their angry superiors and punished. Of course, like all of the other mage towns and cities, Damerel itself was deep underground and hidden away from the human world where nobody could ever disturb it without a native leading the way. As a result of Damerel’s traditions and rules over its young residents, Yamai grew up with a narrow worldview until she was granted valley exploration access after completing her intermediate training in weather manipulation and could visit other valley towns. This was where she also learned about humans and their negative opinions of mages, spirits, and other creatures touched by magical energy.

While at first Yamai didn’t understand the human people and how they could be so irrationally against mages, her parents filled her in on a majority of the information about the history of mages and the competition between both groups of people. It was a struggle of power, fear, and paranoia that was too complicated to even explain to Yamai at the time. With this new information on her mind, Yamai’s optimistic outlook led her to only become more fascinated in the world outside of Damerel and couldn’t wait to be old enough to leave the valley and see the world for herself. She dreamed of traveling the continent with her friends on an amazing road trip to see the sights and meet new people and try new things! As someone who’d lived with the same people in the same town in the same hole in the ground for years, she was itching to get out and explore. But she was divided as well, knowing she still had to help out at the daycare and take care of the young children there. Then there was her mother’s garden she hadn’t neglected to care for since she was five too. She had a lot on her mind around this point in her life and figured she’d make plans for the future just incase, but she wouldn’t settle on a decision for a long time.

New Fears

When Yamai was fifteen and out visiting the neighboring mage town, she saw some strange fliers going around to the mages around town and read about a coming rebellion against the humans of the surface. Yamai wasn’t sure what to think about “rebelling” against the people that she’d come to befriend over the years as she made more frequent visits to both the mage and human towns of the valley. They seemed like really nice people to her! Of course, they didn’t know she was a mage, and she sincerely hoped that wouldn’t impact their relationships. But, she had been able to get along with so many of them without issues she felt bad that there were a group of mages who thought fighting them was the answer. Upon returning home with the news and telling her family and elders about it, most of them wrote it off as a bunch of talk and no action, some little playful act that wouldn’t get a big enough audience to do anything. Others, including her mother and some of the elders, took the news from Yamai much more seriously and decided to deny entry to any mage in possession of a flier or claiming to be a part of this movement for the safety of their people. As for Yamai, she was told to limit her visits to other cities and to be extra careful of suspicious-looking or rowdy mages, especially if they were talking about the rebellion. Yamai obeyed, but she didn’t stop seeing the news spread like wildfire and consume the majority of the news of all the other mage towns.

Some time passed after the initial release of the news about a new rebellion asking for mages to join them in the fight against humans and life went on as usual in Damerel. The adults tried their best to shut out the rebellion and anything about it as best as possible, and it seemed to be working for a while until one day when news came to their doorstep that there was a large group of rebels wanting to enter and recruit mages. The elders initially confronted them, but it took more of the adults to drive them away after a lot of persuading that nobody wanted anything to do with them. While the threat was avoided, it became apparent that they were going to get looped into this ordeal somehow and would need to figure out a way to stop them from doing anything drastic. Yamai’s mother was named as one of four mages to leave the town and seek a counter-rebellion, join it, and work alongside them in restoring order and peace so that the new extremist rebellion would cease their actions as soon as possible. Yamai told her she wanted to help her find the counter-rebellion and see the world with her, but she was strictly against it and cited that it was too dangerous and in direct violation of Damerel’s rules and traditions. It stunk for Yamai and she hated that her mother would have to leave Yamai and her father for the expedition, but nobody had any say in it besides the elders whose minds were already made up. Yamai continued to live out her life in Damerel and dreams of the day she will turn eighteen and graduate from her training program so that she can move on from her hometown and leave the valley in search of her mother and the counter-rebellion. For now though, she continues to help out in the daycare, around the garden, with her father’s shop, and continues with her magic training to become a strong enough mage to survive out in the world one day..

Manipulation Gloves [ Magic + 30, Focus + 30 ]

Most manipulation mages don’t use wands, staffs, or other handheld objects to increase their magical power. Instead, they tend to wear gloves, rings, or bracelets to keep their hands free so that they can more effectively control what they are bending with their hand, wrist, and finger movements. Yamai uses a standard pair of weather manipulation gloves that stretch to her elbow to pull more concentrated energy from her body to use at once. They make conjuring up storms, lightning, and other long-distance magical attacks easier for Yamai. However, she wasn’t allowed to use magical upgrades like these gloves until she was ten years old.

Yellow Onyx Choker [ Magic + 20 ]

Yamai’s choker, two ribbons cut to resemble lightning bolts with a yellow onyx gem in the middle, was a gift from her mentor in Damerel for completing beginner and intermediate magic lessons in weather manipulation. It’s purpose was to help strengthen her powers and increase her ability to focus the energy while she continued her training beyond basic levels so that she would be capable of far more than she could do before. It is a treasured gift she wears everyday both to help her magic and to serve as a reminder of home.

Plant Book [ Knowledge + 25 ]

Yamai carries around her plant book in her backpack wherever she goes in case she ever needs to research plants or fungi while she’s out traveling. It is a large book made up of compiled notes and research her father took on his travels across the country and around the globe. Yamai sometimes uses it to research what plants are edible in her area, what would make for great spices, and also what would be useful for medicines and what is dangerous and should be avoided.

Yellow Backpack [ Storage + 40 ]

Yamai’s yellow backpack she took back and forth between school and home is her primary unit of storage for all of her belongings. She keeps her plant book, puffball doll, extra pairs of clothes, jars of medicine, food ingredients, a water bottle, and sometimes a pan inside her backpack’s storage compartments. Inside a special little compartment on the inside is her wallet with a picture of her family and their dog so that if she's out traveling or busy training, she will always have a reminder of home.

Pink Puffball Doll [ Luck + 5 ]

Yamai’s pink puffball doll is a little gift that her friends at Damerel’s magic school gave her for her twelfth birthday. She sometimes carries it around in her backpack with her other things if there’s enough room inside for a bit of extra luck and comfort when out camping. It’s somewhat worn and smells vaguely of peaches, but Yamai takes good care of it and would be devastated if it was ever destroyed.